The numbers are truly staggering: $31.8 million spent by liberal groups backing Katie McGinty, and $28.8 million spent by conservatives for incumbent Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey.

Another $15.4 million spent directly by Toomey’s campaign, and $4.3 million by McGinty’s, brings the grand total to a whopping $88.9 million and makes Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race the second-most expensive political contest in the country.

The first? You probably already guessed it: the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both of those candidates’ campaigns spend and raise money in the hundreds of millions — $795 million for Clinton; $403.1 million for Trump as of Aug. 31.

It’s possible that the investment of outside money could buy Democrat McGinty a ticket to the U.S. Senate. The most recent Franklin & Marshall College Poll, taken between Sept. 28 and Oct. 2, has her up six points on GOP Sen. Toomey, 41 percent to 35 percent among likely voters.

That’s similar to what her advantage was in late August, according to the college, but with nearly one in four voters still undecided, it’s far from a done deal. Other polls have the race a virtual dead heat.

While both the Toomey-McGinty race and the Clinton-Trump contest boast gaudy price tags and vitriolic ad wars, there’s one striking difference between them. Just one percent of voters surveyed by F & M said they didn’t know enough to have an opinion about Clinton or Trump. So say what you want about the role of money in American politics, at least that race has something to show for it: nearly all voters have an opinion about the candidates.

The same can’t be said in the Toomey-McGinty matchup. With tens of millions of dollars — outside money from outside groups, remember — flooding the airwaves, 21 percent of voters say they still don’t have enough information about McGinty and 17 percent say the same about Toomey, according to the F&M poll.

It’s unlikely that thoughtful voters in search of useful insight about the candidates will find it in ads paid for by these outside groups. Thier money is driving this Senate race into the ground and helping to cheapen the public discourse, not improve it.

That’s why it’s vital that the electorate tune in on Oct. 17, when McGinty and Toomey debate each other in Pittsburgh; and against on Oct. 24, when they debate in Philadelphia.

The Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, is already warning that the tidal wave of outside money could leave Pennsylvania’s next senator beholden to megadonors and special interest groups.

The natural checks-and-balances to these donors and this money are engaged and interested voters who pay attention to the candidates and show both that it’s what they say and do in those debates that matters — not what some faceless group of political operatives pays to have said about them on television and radio stations.

It’s up to voters to decide: will they pick the candidate they feel is best suited to help lead Pennsylvania in the United States Senate? Or will the people pouring money into the race get exactly what they paid for?